On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

No, their changes single handedly deleted rare items from the game, put suffixes into stupid primary/secondary categories and introduced tons of crafting mats which could only be farmed at a very specific place. They made the game strictly worse with only good thing being higher item drops. Thats all. You cant say those changes made the game better, it doesn't make any logical sense.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

No, their changes single handedly deleted rare items from the game, put suffixes into stupid primary/secondary categories and introduced tons of crafting mats which could only be farmed at a very specific place. They made the game strictly worse with only good thing being higher item drops. Thats all. You cant say those changes made the game better, it doesn't make any logical sense.

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They deleted the AH, rebalanced game drops, introduced new endgame mechanics, and overall made the game much more enjoyable. Their overall goal was to ensure that the player was having fun first, not to create artificial longevity like they did before.


And before we get into the whole 'rare items worthless' in D3, do realize that rare items are nearly worthless in PoE at this point if we are talking about temp league play outside of a few pieces of gear which are mainly resist life based, and nothing really unique (which was basically what you were looking for in D3 anyways).


D3 gets alot of flak on these forums for real dumb reasons, as does RoS, despite the fact that RoS pretty much revived D3 from the dead. In fact, GGG could learn a few things from the RoS expansion, mostly that balance for the sake of balance and not accounting for player fun is a real bad idea. That's what D3 did before, they balanced for the sake of balance. Look at how awful the game was at the beginning. Maybe it's not a great game now, but it's a fun arcadey beat em up that is fun to play every seasonal reset.

I know this won't ever be seen by devs, but instead of eliminating spell power from charges altogether, why not just shift it to power charges? Power charges were only desirable for the massive amount of crit chance they provided. The reduction in crit per power charge should leave room to open up having power charges grant a mild amount of spell power per charge. This not only puts endgame optimization for casters in the "caster" portion of the tree. it further differentiates the three types of charges.

"But dedreaper! We already developed a node on the tree that already does that!"

Yes I'm quite aware of the "spell damage per power charge" node at the north end of the tree... and it currently doesn't match up with the charge incentives in the tree.

You see both incentive nodes on the tree for endurance/frenzy stacking revolve around gaining defense per charge. Power charges don't have a defensive stacking incentive. By swapping that node to stack defensively, power charges can take on the 4% spell damage per power charge no problem. Most power charge builds tend to move towards spells, so there will be a slight defensive buff gained for these builds (for investing in that particular node on the tree), and hybrid investors (frenzy+power charges) won't miss out on their sweet sweet spell damage, however they'll have to make a mindful decision whether they want cast speed or damage to invest in (build diversity) because fully investing in both spreads the build too thin.

There is 4 days left till FoO, Would that not be enough time to test this theory?

'' The minimum requirement to join our QA team is 1000 hours of PoE experience, and we still turn people with that prerequisite away if they're not good enough at the game. Our design, balance and QA team are experts at Path of Exile. I would not accept any less. They put substantial work into each change, planning out not only what it affects now, but what it affects in the future. These changes are all considered in the big picture of the other planned changes.''

I lol-ed. Your QA team filled with experts managed to accurately get up to 25k es, easily 15k and only 9k life with perfect gear? Tell them to learn how to play life builds then.

This is a bit of a long rant but I hope it reaches out to the guys behind the game.
So basically, this is a rant that is pretty much combining all the changes that I wasn't able to test due to the fact that I'm unable to access beta (but I hope I'm heard regardless).
I've been playing PoE for 3 years just because I was able to make crazy builds that shouldn't work but end up working anyway. Freeze discharge was one of them. With the new Frenzy charge change, it doesn't make any sense going frenzy over power charge. Bleeds was another thing I was looking forward to. "Big hit for a big bleed" was my aim and with the new node that you've added .. I don't even think I'm going to touch bleed at this point, I absolutely hate the fact that you've reduced bleed into a lesser poison state. I've been playing and watching this game for a long time. I'm not very rich so I don't have a lot of banners or titles that claim I've invested a lot of money into the game but I have invested what I can. The game has been inclined towards the speed meta for the longest time (ever since chaos LA was a thing, actually before that even) and to my dismay it doesn't look like it's going to stop (which is fine, people like to press 1 or 2 buttons at max to clear a full map with its boss included I understand that). The game has been unhealthy going about this route though. Buffing something like poison to the point where it became honestly the most boring, uncreative thing that downs things like shaper in 5 seconds or less .. it was just very very unhealthy. So with 3.0 coming, I thought "hey maybe they'll finally adjust the game to cater to the new/old players without making any mistakes seeing as they *SHOULD* be taking their time." but so far .. I'm only seeing rushed decisions. It might be that you're planning a big reveal soon (if not then there's something wrong with the communication between the devs and the players) that justifies your changes, in this case, disregard the following:
3.0 was (and maybe still is) your chance to fix a lot of unbalanced mechanics in the game without nerfing it to the ground. ES was a thing that players have been complaining about for years, but now you've nerfed it -from what I've heard and seen- a little too roughly. Poison is still playable but you're pretty much constricting builds that can utilize poison, the new node specified for crit with damage over time (perfect agony I think it was called) is a clear sign for that. Frenzy charges for attacks? That's a big No No, it's just bad, never limit a mechanic to one base skill/spell/attack, that's not how PoE works or used to work over the years. PoE is known for it's diversity, why the limitation?
My suggestion is to take your time with your balancing changes. Postpone 3.0 release another week, two weeks, another month, but do not butcher creative builds to cut down overpowered ones. Listen to your players like I know you are and make sane and concise decisions based on their feedback. Do not use things like "another quick note" to communicate a change that is not supposed to be made quickly. Understand that the players of this game are as concerned with PoE and its state as you guys are. Do not take our concerns (regardless of how they're portrayed) lightly. Listen to the community because you're only looking at the surface, not the core. A simple example is Vinktar's (no one said the damage Vinktar's provided was op, it's the leech that's insane). Please listen more, understand more, decide slowly, take your time. We want PoE to be great again. We don't want it to be as stale as it was the last year and a half. Please.
Regardless, thank you for trying to make the game better though your way of going about it is questionable at best.

I cant understand the logic of these changes GGG: first you introduce very nice Tinker armour for Trappers which give +% to gain Frenzy charge and second - introduce changes which remove any effect of Frenzy charges from Trapper-builds - what the hell is this?
The same problem with Node which should increase % to gain Frenzy charge with traps - what reason should i have to take that Node now?

Whether i don't know something or don't understand you...
Sadly... I planned to start as Trapper.

Nerfs are a good thing.

All previous OP builds must be nerfed. ES was OP. Kill it, make people play Life.
Assasin was op -> kill it

Why you never think about buffing Endurance charges?

Hey I just realized I could do something else while the game is open in the background until 1k hours played and I'd qualify for a dev position just like all the current ones did.

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Chris wrote:

There's a common misconception in the community that our balance team doesn't play Path of Exile. They actually do play it, a whole lot. We have people with level 100 hardcore characters, multiple famous community members who have come to work for us and you may not even know it. The minimum requirement to join our QA team is 1000 hours of PoE experience, and we still turn people with that prerequisite away if they're not good enough at the game. Our design, balance and QA team are experts at Path of Exile. I would not accept any less. They put substantial work into each change, planning out not only what it affects now, but what it affects in the future. These changes are all considered in the big picture of the other planned changes.

While processing player feedback in preparation for 3.0.0, we found four requests that we could address simultaneously with our proposed charge changes:

• Nerf total crit chance available. It was getting too close to cap, too easily.
• Nerf the Assassin. This was frequently requested.
• Provide more uses for power charges on spellcasters (especially non-crit ones).
• Make it less mandatory for general damage dealers to invest in frenzy charges.

We recently made these charge changes in the beta, and received an immediate negative reaction from a vocal portion of the community. While we firmly stand behind the intention of this change, it's very clear that the community not only misunderstood a lot of the consequences, but also generally didn't like the direction of the change.

We make this game for you guys, so if you don't want the change, we aren't going to force it in purely to solve long-term problems. The short-term and build continuity do matter as well. We hope to get feedback from your playtesting in the next few days of the beta, so that we can make a decision this week about whether it remains in this form, is reverted, or is made in another form.

We communicated poorly about the changes and their motivation. While we may lament the community misunderstanding the consequences of the change, it is clearly our fault for confusing the community. While it has been crazily hectic recently, we do need to stop and take the time to more clearly explain what we are testing, and why.

Almost all of these changes are on Beta. Please playtest them and let us know the results of what you find. We'll post again after the weekend with our findings also.

Thank you for your time, support and occasional overreactions. We expect nothing less <3

LOL

Well, they balanced PoE into a hole of no return. Everyone I know has either quit or doesn't bother to build anything at all.

You guys keep nerfing everything into the dirt all in the name of "balance".

Why don't you stop lying Chris and speak the truth (LOL, like that will happen). You nerf things to keep "player progression" slow so you can feed the greed of the corporate monster you've created.

GL, this game is choking to death. Another 3 months and it will be in severe decline.

Those of us who see the decline don't expect you guys to "get it". This is the same garbage other gaming companies do and none of you seem to learn the lessons of failure. NOT ONE OF YOU!

You kill builds every patch. WOW, that's fun, NOT.
You nerf EVERYTHING, maps, experience, etc. WOW, that's fun, NOT.

Why you say? for "balance", LOL. Yeah right, it's to slow the less than 1% of the player base from progressing too fast, thereby killing the game for the other 99%.

I've seen new player after new player give up because of the bad joke of nerfs that has culminated into a "UN FUN" game.

And now you're finally losing your core player base.

Throwing trinket micro-transactions at us won't solve the core problem of excessive nerfs. Nope, won't solve your problem.

Because one by one, there will be fewer and fewer people paying money to buy glitter because the game has been gutted into the kingdom of "UN FUN".

Never ever take the fun out of a game.

But whatever boss, you got it all figured out don't you.